'My ex-husband, the maniac rapist and killer who terrorised women in Novosibirsk'

Taxi driver Alexey Ivanov, 39, has confessed to killing four women in his quest to 'cleanse' Novosibirsk of prostitutes, with police now investigating whether he has more victims, according to a report. He picked up women in his car, before taking them to lonely locations in forests where he raped and killed them. 

Now his ex-wife Natalia Ivanova-Vasilenko, 31, has told how she met and fell in love with him when he was in jail for abusing a woman, but also how he beat her before her 'miracle' escape. 

'We met when Alexey was in jail, convicted for the second time,' she said. 'At that time I was divorced and raising my two year old daughter. I went to the prison colony along with my cousin, to visit her boyfriend there. Her boyfriend, in turn, was friends with Alexey - and that's how it all started to happen.'

She said: 'I knew that he was in jail for an attack on a woman. But Alexey insisted that he had been framed, and said he did not do anything. I believed him because to me at that moment he did not show any rudeness.' 

She waited for him to be released for three years and said the first years of their family life together were 'very good'. He had good relations with her daughter Liza, now 15, who treated him as her real father as she grew up. 'I was so glad about this,' she said. He also had a daughter by his ex-wife who was pregnant when he was sent to jail. 

After losing a factory job, things turned bad, she said. He had taken out loans and could not repay them. He started to shout and quarrel with Natalia and Liza. Natalia recalled: 'Because of his shouting my daughter was afraid to stay with him at home. She went to my parents until I got home from work.'

One day they went to feed their rabbits and suddenly he began ranting and beating Natalia. 'When my little girl stood up for me he hit her. It is a miracle that God saved us - now I understand that all could have ended much worse ...' 

She 'tricked' him into a divorce despite his threats. She told him his debts would prevent her getting a mortgage. He agreed finally after opposing the idea, and then went to Moscow to work. 

Meanwhile, the killer has confessed to police how he killed one of his victims. He said in testimony that the 'prostitute' had failed to fulfil all his desires.  At the crime scene, he said: 'In late May I brought here a girl, who I had just met. We were on the back seat of my car, then I grabbed her by the hair and pulled out of the car. I threw her on the ground and started kicking her and then beat her in the face. 

'Then I stopped, she stood up and we stood face to face. She told me that her patrons would find me and punish for attacking her. Then she asked me to give her a cigarette. I gave it to her. She had been smoking and continued to threaten me. I hit her again, she fell on the road, but continued to resist. Then I took my belt and strangled her.' 

He hid her body in the forest before leading police to the place after his arrest and confession to four murders last month. Ivanov was linked by DNA to the murder of Galina Litvinenko, 28, after which he confessed to three other killings, said police. 

Conflicting accounts of his killings have appeared in media, attributed to law enforcement sources. It was reported that he dismembered his victims including cutting out their sex organs, but this is now denied. 

The latest account says: 'Women were killed in different ways: one stabbed, one strangled, and the third and latest victim - Galina - beaten to death with a baton.' Not all his victims were sex workers, say police. 'Only two of his victims can be attributed to the category of 'easy' women. The other two, including the last victim - normal women with children,' said a source.